Blood and Oil - Middle East in WWI Pt 1: Surprise Attack

Part 1 - Surprise Attack. Enver Pasha, minister of war for the Ottoman Empire, agrees to a secret alliance with Germany in August 1914. Istanbul mobilizes its army but remains neutral for nearly three months. Eager for a fight against Russia, Enver orders the Turkish Black Sea Fleet to bombard Russian seaports on October 29th. The Triple Entente -- France, Russia and Great Britain -- reacts swiftly and declares war against the Turks within a week.

Except for the Dardanelles/Gallipoli campaigns, the extensive combat operations in the Middle East during World War I have been largely overlooked in documentary programs. Given the historical significance of the Ottoman Empire's demise in 1918, and the ongoing importance of Middle Eastern oil reserves to Western economies, a close study of this conflict provides two important lessons:

1. The Treaty of Versailles, agreed to by the Western Powers in 1919, paved the way for military and political chaos in the Middle East, which continues to this very day.

2. Oil reserves in the Middle East became an important strategic concern for Western Powers, helping to justify their economic, diplomatic and military interference in the region.

After the end of World War I, most of the Ottoman Empire was carved up into "spheres of influence", controlled mostly by the British and French. The remaining territories became the modern state of Turkey in 1923 -- after a five-year struggle by Turkish nationalists against Western domination.

With little regard for cultural, historical, religious and demographic considerations, the West sponsored the creation of several new nations: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Thus, a "tinderbox" was built from Western greed, igniting a multitude of wars, revolts, coups and military occupations that truly have made the defeat of the Ottoman Empire little more than a hollow victory.

Available on DVD. http://www.youtube.com/user/BloodAndOilMovie

Merchants of Misery: The World Bank Scam

The World Bank Scam

The World Bank helps poor countries, right?

Not quite.

As this two part video shows, World Banks loans come with "conditions."

Not only that, but they seem to be designed not to strengthen the borrowing countries, but to make it easier to extract - you guessed it - oil and other resources from these countries.

Nothing more than an international crime syndicate running a scam that is at the heart of world poverty.

The numer one client of the World Bank is KBR Halliburton

KBR stands for Kellogg Brown and Root, and the Brown in KBR is none other than the same Brown as in Brown Brothers Harriman, who along with their partner German industrialist Fritz Thyssen and their Union Banking Corporation, financed Hitler's rise to power and whose managing partner was none other than Prescott Bush, father to George HW Bush and grandfather to George W Bush.

The Browns/Harrimans also sit on the board of the Federal Reserve/International Central banks.

http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/493.html

Breaking: Exxon breaks own annual profit record

http://www.legitgov.org/

Breaking: Exxon breaks own annual profit record 30 Jan 2009 Exxon Mobil Corp. said its fourth-quarter net income fell 33 percent to $7.82 billion, on lower oil prices in the last months of 2008, but managed to break its own profit record for a U.S. company. Exxon, the world's biggest nongovernmental oil company, reported a profit of $45.2 billion for 2008, in spite of fourth-quarter earnings dropping 33 percent from a year ago. The previous record for annual profit was $40.6 billion, which Exxon set in 2007.

Oil Giant Smashes Profit Record --US oil colossus Exxon Mobil has recorded the largest ever annual profit by a publicly listed company. 30 Jan 2009 The firm, the world's most valuable by market capitalisation, notched up profits of almost £32bn despite a recent plunge in crude prices. But the earnings were secured on the back of triple-digit price for most of 2008, rocketing to a record peak above $147 a barrel in July. The Texas-based company shattered its own annual profit record of £28bn posted in 2007 - even though the final three months of last year yielded just £5.5bn in profits.

Chevron record profit nearly $24 billion in 2008 30 Jan 2009 Chevron Corp. captured fourth-quarter profits of $4.9 billion, but the earnings were only 1 percent higher than the year before and were fueled primarily by a one-time gain of $600 million. During all of 2008, Chevron earned $23.93 billion, a record for a full year.

A Rich Income in '06 Was $263 Million 30 Jan 2009 The income of the 400 wealthiest Americans swelled in 2006, soaring nearly 23 percent from the previous year, to an average of $263 million, according to data released Thursday by the Internal Revenue Service. Since 1996, this group has nearly doubled its share of all income earned in the United States. The top 400 paid just more than $18 billion in federal income taxes in 2006, or an average of $45 million, on a record $105 billion in total income -- the lowest effective tax rate in the 15 years since the agency began releasing such data. That compares with nearly $1 trillion paid by all other individual taxpayers in 2006.